


Facts Concerning Eren Jaeger and his Feelings on Literature

by RamblingMegome



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Books, Eremin - Freeform, Eren and Armin are super in love, Eren has a complicated relationship with books, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, It's pretty cheesy, Jean is mentioned, Kissing, M/M, Mikasa's in it too briefly, Mild Language, More of a thematic exploration of points throughout Eren's life, Not nearly as stiff as the title sounds, Not too much plot, References to Books, Snapshots, everyone is happy and alive, really so much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:25:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7369093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RamblingMegome/pseuds/RamblingMegome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren has a nebulous relationship with books over the course of his life. It's all thanks to that cute blonde that he can't just hate them anymore, like he did back in the simple days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Facts Concerning Eren Jaeger and his Feelings on Literature

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all brought some wine to go with the massive amount of cheese in this silly thing.

Eren hated books with all the righteous fury of a five-year-old. He hated the musty smell and the dry smooth pages filled with the boring dark symbols that didn’t seem to really make words the way everyone said they did, no matter what angle he looked at them from. When his mother tried to sit him on her lap for story time at night he squirmed and groaned and huffed, and sometimes even wailed, until she sighed in defeat and let him crawl off to play with his trucks on the carpet, his imagination (and his sound effects) quickly drowning out the sound of her voice as she tried to read aloud. Knights and fairy tales were cool and all, but why should he sit around staring at dumb flat pages when he could be outside, catching frogs in the pond and climbing creaky old trees, getting muddy and dirty and making his own adventures? He bet the grove at the edge of the park, with its towering, gnarled trees and deep dark shadows, housed far scarier monsters than any old storybook could come up with.

Even worse was the fact that, now that he’d started kindergarten, everyone was trying to force him to sit down and stare at books and letters for what felt like _hours_ and _hours_ on end, telling him it was finally time he needed to learn to read. And at school, no matter how much he kicked and screamed, the teachers never relented and let him go play. No, they sent him to the Bad Boy Corner for a time out, and then told his mom on him when she came to pick him up, and _that_ never ended well. On top of whatever cruel punishment she inflicted upon him, like refusing to let him have dessert, he was also subjected to the looks of helplessness she cast toward him as she tried to figure out what to do with him. His dad once joked that maybe he’d rather learn from passages of his medical books instead of the usual “see Spot run” variety. Eren’s parents laughed for years afterwards at the look on his face as he practically pulled his hair out in desperate, frustrated boredom after hearing two sentences.

~

Eren hated books, it was true, but he couldn’t ignore the injustice taking place right before his eyes as the ring of Big Kids held one up out of reach of the small blonde they shoved between them. Eren, who at this point in his life was determined that he was going to grow up to be a superhero just like Mighty Titan on TV, let out a war screech and charged headlong into battle. It was a struggle of epic proportions that he knew would be sung about in ages to come, a mess of flailing limbs and flying flecks of spit, and though Eren didn’t _quite_ give as good as he got, he was successful in that, eventually, the aggressors got tired and left them alone.

His many bruises ached, but he tried not to show it. The blonde, a boy about his age, was somewhat banged up as well, albeit not as badly. He was pale, like he didn’t play outside much, and his hair was the color of straw, down to his chin and mussed up from the scuffle. The book, miraculously, was unharmed, save for a bit of dirt on the cover. Eren watched in amazement as the other boy rubbed the dirt off with his sleeve and clutched it to his chest. He’d never seen anyone handle one of those vile things so _tenderly_. Plus, the thing was massive, way bigger than anything he’d ever been made to read. It was like one of his dad’s books. Just looking at it made his head hurt.

“’S that a picture book?” He blurted, asking the logical question. Picture books weren’t so bad. He might be able to understand if it was a picture book. But the boy just stared at him with the widest, bluest eyes Eren had ever seen, and shook his head no.

“It’s not?” Eren was confused. “What’s so special ‘bout it then? Regular books are boring.”

“They are not!” The words came tumbling out of the blonde’s mouth, and his expression had morphed from shell-shocked to defensive. “They tell you about lots of new things and lots of new places! And even if you can’t do something for real, reading about it is kind of like being able to do it! Even living in a boring town like this, books let me have lots of adventures.” He curled tighter around the book as he spoke, glaring at Eren with a mixture of fear and defiance. He looked like he thought he was going to get beat up again.

But Eren, for once in his young life, did not get angry that someone had raised their voice to him. Instead he was… kind of curious, actually. He’d been told things like that before, by grown-ups trying to coax or cajole him into reading, but none of them had seemed to _believe_ it the way this kid seemed to. The boy was clinging to the book like it was his best friend in the whole wide world.

“So what’s that one about, then?” He asked, gesturing to it. If it was a bazillion pages of Dick and Jane he might have to take the kid to his dad for a checkup – even his mom didn’t really like Dick and Jane books. Then again, from the size of it, maybe it _was_ a medical book like his dad’s. Eren didn’t know which would be worse.

The blonde blinked in surprise at the question. “It’s… about adventurers,” he said, almost warily. “Every chapter’s about a different adventurer exploring a different part of the world. Some of them go to jungles and rainforests, and some of them go to big cities…” The caution left his expression and his eyes got a kind of shine to them as he started to get caught up in his words. “One person saw an alligator the size of a school bus! And one person was in the jungle on a trail, and there was this ocelot – that’s a kind of wild cat – that came right up to him and he got to pet it, because it lived by the trail an’ was really used to humans! An’ one person was looking for a kind of poison frog, but then suddenly she realized there was a big spider on her face! Also did you know there are some parts of the world where cows an’ sheep an’ goats are allowed to just walk around wherever they want? Even in the roads!”

The boy was full-on beaming now, radiating with a kind of joy and excitement that Eren didn’t think he’d ever seen before. The gleam in those blue, blue eyes made him want to share that excitement and feel that same joy. Maybe it was because those adventures actually did sound pretty cool that his heart was suddenly beating so fast. Before he knew it, he was grinning right back. He stood up and offered a hand to the boy, who paused, suddenly shy after his outburst. But after a moment the blonde took it and pulled himself up, staring down at the ground in uncertainty.

“Okay, I take it back,” Eren said, still holding onto his hand. “Your book isn’t boring. It sounds really cool actually!”

“Th… thanks,” the other boy murmured, glancing briefly up at him.

“But y’know, Shiganshina’s not a boring town either. There’s lotsa adventures to do here too! Wanna see? Wanna go play?”

The boy’s eyes were on him again, this time wide with disbelief. “Really? With me? Is that… okay?” His fingers curled nervously against the book, nails digging slightly into the thick binding.

“Of course it is!” He gave the small, cool hand a tug. “Let’s go!”

The boy’s first few steps were hesitant, but he met Eren’s determined gaze for a moment, and something he saw there made him relax and smile again. Together they ran along the edge of somebody’s backyard toward the park, yellow-topped dandelions brushing past their shins, still hand-in-hand.

“I’m Armin Arlert,” the boy puffed from slightly behind him. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Eren,” Eren said. “Y’think there are any poison frogs in the pond?”

~

Eren didn’t hate books anymore. His parents were stunned when he finally acquiesced to his lessons, and although the letters still didn’t come easy to him, he attacked them with all the righteous determination of a five-year-old, because if books brought such excitement into Armin’s big blue eyes, they couldn’t possibly be all bad. At story time he sat against his mother’s side, glaring intently down at the words as he tried to follow along with her pace as she read. He tried to commit every detail to memory so he could tell Armin about it the next day. Armin already knew most of the stories he brought, but he watched anyway as Eren reenacted them, and if he threw in a few extra dinosaurs here and there, well, it was just more interesting that way.

Armin, in turn, would settle down against a tree and open his big book on his lap and read out loud, and Eren would shimmy in beside him, absentmindedly tearing up the grass as the other boy’s clear voice transported him to cities with towering skyscrapers crowded in with colorful flashing windows, to tiny villages with houses made of mud, to strange forests where the air was always heavy with heat and mist, to oceans vast and blue where the breeze was crisp and smelled of salt. The oceans were Armin’s favorite. Whenever he spoke about them he would shift with excitement, his eyes would fly across the pages and the words would tumble faster from his lips, as if he’d forgotten he had an audience. The oceans were his favorite, so they were Eren’s favorite, too. When he looked at the gleam of wonder in those blue eyes that came just from reading about the ocean, he wondered how Armin would look if he actually got to see it for himself. Deep down in his heart, Eren resolved to find out someday.

In the meantime, though, he made sure that Armin was never bored in Shiganshina again. True to his word, they found lots of adventures in the pond or on the playground. Eren found that it was even more fun with someone else, and with Armin, he was finally able to venture into the grove at the edge of the park. Armin borrowed a headlamp and a plant guidebook from his grandpa, they packed ham sandwiches and some grapes into a paper bag for provisions, and together they crept into the shadows of the tall trees, hands tightly clasped together as they peered cautiously around for lurking tigers or remnant prehistoric monstrosities. They didn’t find any, but Armin got really excited over some moss on a rotting tree trunk, and then they both ran out shrieking when Eren kicked at a fallen log and a bajillion bees, that he swore were as big as his fist, swarmed out like an angry buzzing thundercloud. When they were back in the sunlight and at a safe distance over by the swing set they collapsed in a panting, giggling heap, devolving into hysterical laughter when they realized that Armin had sat on their lunch bag and flattened the sandwiches.

When they calmed down, though, they realized that Armin had dropped the guidebook somewhere on the way. The look on his face all but broke Eren’s heart, so he stood up and squared his shoulders and marched back to the edge of the trees, Armin clinging to his sleeve as they retraced their steps. There were still some bees buzzing around the log, and there was the book, on the ground just a few feet away.

He looked at the book. It was paperback, and a skinny thing, at least compared to what Armin usually carried around. This one didn’t even have any stories, it just told you what plants were called in some weird other language. He looked at the bees. He swore they were as big as oranges, and they still looked pretty angry.

He heard a sniffle just behind his shoulder, and there was no question in his mind of what he was about to do. He took a deep breath and charged.

~

Eren didn’t hate books, but he hated reading. All his English teachers seemed to sense this, and made him suffer accordingly. He slacked and struggled his way through all of his high school required readings, disappointed his teachers with his lackluster essay assignments, and found himself in detention more than once for dozing off or doodling or playing phone games during discussions. He just couldn’t enjoy slogging through hundreds of pages of the dense, old-fashioned language of the so-called classics, or bring himself to care, much less write two pages, about why an author decided to make some flowers red.

His saving grace was Armin, who avidly consumed every piece of written material he could get his hands on, be it classic literature, young adult novels, textbooks for classes he wasn’t even taking, or even the pamphlets in the optician’s waiting room. Eren found himself much more interested when Armin was explaining things to him, whether that was the plot synopsis of _Catcher in the Rye_ or even the symbolic significance of red as opposed to, say, blue. Then again, his adopted sister Mikasa teased that Eren would even be fascinated by the life cycle of a dung beetle if Armin was the one explaining it. Eren did in fact recall one such conversation and couldn’t really deny that, so he settled for tugging her scarf up to her forehead in retaliation.

“Seriously, I think you saved my life on that take-home essay,” he said, tilting his chair onto its back legs as his pencil dangled idly in his hand. The two of them were in Eren’s room having one of their usual homework sessions. Eren was at his desk, procrastinating on his math assignment. Armin was just to his right, sitting on the foot of the bed with his nose in a Biology textbook. “I got it back today, it was a B! Ms. Ral said she was glad to see some improvement, and she hopes I keep it up. The way she said it sounded more like she’s going to skin me alive if I don’t, though.”

“Congratulations!” Armin lowered the book and Eren could see his bright smile. “I knew you could do it. Now try to stay on her good side, okay? She’s really nice, but if you set her off she’s almost as bad as the vice principal. I think they’re friends, actually.”

Eren grimaced. He’d had his fair share of disciplinary encounters with the tiny-yet-terrifying man. “I’ll do my best, but it’s not _my_ fault all the books we have to read are so boring.”

“ _Lord of the Flies_ is not boring!” Armin protested, just like Eren knew he would – it was practically a reflex. “It’s a fascinating study of social power dynamics in a contained group environment and it brings up questions of inherent moral nature by using children who are often socially considered pure or…” He trailed off as he registered Eren’s raised eyebrow and smirk. “Oh, ha, ha. You got me. Again,” he said flatly, rolling his eyes, though he couldn’t suppress the small smile that played around the corners of his own lips.

“Who needs Sparknotes when I’ve got you?” Eren teased, leaning back in his chair and giving him a big, adoring grin.

“Oh, get back to work,” Armin muttered, hiding his face behind the book again, but Eren saw the tips of his ears turning red. He went back to his worksheet with even less concentration and butterflies in his stomach, grin still lingering on his lips.

~

Eren was beginning to resent books. Lately they were all Armin seemed to have time for. Mikasa joined them for their homework sessions when she was free, but when she had practice Armin ducked out as well, saying things like he had to go to the library to do research for some paper or other, or he just felt like sitting in bed reading the new novel he’d just ordered. Eren didn’t get why he couldn’t just do those things with him while he did homework like they always had, but Armin just mumbled something about concentration and hurried off.

He’d also been refusing to meet Eren’s eyes as of late. Whenever Eren leaned in to ask something or tried to settle in beside him, he’d duck behind the pages, obscuring his face, and speak into the binding. Or he’d say _not now, it’s at a really interesting part,_ and shoo him away. Which was frustrating, because Eren had been trying to say something important for a while now, and how was he supposed to do that with a thick wall of pages between them? Maybe he’d have better luck if he was better with reading, too. He’d heard Armin and Mikasa discuss certain books for _hours_ at a time, picking apart intricacies of plot points and character arcs that Eren probably wouldn’t even have picked up on. No, Eren was good at sports, at handling animals. He’d even discovered he wasn’t half bad at artsy things, like painting and sculpting. The hands-on stuff. He worked hard enough to get by with the rest, but he was still a slow reader and he just couldn’t wrap his head around stuff like symbolism or syntax. To Eren, a flower was a flower, whether it was red or blue or purple – it would die without water and would look pretty in a meadow, or in a vase, or threaded into golden hair.

So he couldn’t help being a little jealous. Or a lot jealous, if he were perfectly honest. Not so much of Mikasa, but of the books themselves and the power they had to utterly consume Armin’s attention and energy. The blonde had pretty much stopped reading out loud to him as well, and it didn’t surprise him a bit how much he missed it. For all his difficulties with reading, he had never felt it to be any kind of barrier to their relationship until now. He didn’t know what he would do if suddenly Armin decided Eren wasn’t intellectual enough for him. He thought they’d always had a lot of fun despite their differences, or even _because_ of them – Armin gave Eren somewhere to direct his wild energy, and Eren made sure Armin enjoyed the world outside the pages of his books. But what if it wasn’t enough? Recently the blonde had somehow become friends with some horse-faced prick at school, a guy who was loud and hot-tempered like Eren but who was less volatile and smarter and also liked to read – he was even in Armin’s honors class. As much as Eren hated the guy’s guts, how could he blame Armin for choosing Horseface’s company over his? Thinking about it left a nasty throbbing in his chest, like the bitter swelling of a bee sting.

At the moment, Eren, Armin, and Mikasa were sitting at the Jaeger’s kitchen table, homework scattered about them as they worked. They sat mostly in a focused silence, with the occasional comment or diversion into short conversations. Eren was trying to answer some history questions, but Armin was next to him with his chin propped on his palm as he jotted down notes, hair tucked back behind his ear, and he was making it kind of hard to breathe, much less think about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. His gaze wandered frequently over to the boy next to him, and every once in a while he thought he caught Armin’s eyes flicking back down to his paper. It was probably just his imagination, but the it still made his heart do stupid little flips in his chest.

Mikasa checked her watch. “I have to go,” she said, pushing back from the table and standing up, shuffling her papers together into a neat stack. “Team dinner tonight. You’re both coming to the game tomorrow, right?” She fixed them with her cool gaze. Eren didn’t miss her subtle emphasis on “both.”

“Yeah, of course,” Eren replied, narrowing his eyes at her. _Get off my back already._

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Armin said, looking up from his notes. “Actually, I should probably get going too, I think my requests from the inter-library loan came in today.”

Eren’s heart plummeted into his stomach, but Mikasa’s hand came firmly down on the blonde’s shoulder before he could get up.

“Would you mind sticking around a little longer? Eren’s got an essay due tomorrow that he’s going to need checked. I was going to do it, but I forgot about the dinner and he still has the last couple of paragraphs to write. Isn’t that right, Eren?” Her dark eyes were fixed unreadably on Armin’s, whose expression was obscured by the way his head was turned to look up at her.

“I, uh… yeah,” Eren stammered out. It wasn’t a _complete_ lie… the essay was actually due on Monday, and he hadn’t even started it yet.

Armin looked down at the edge of the table and bit his lower lip, hesitating. “Well… okay. The library will still have my books tomorrow, and I guess I can’t let you fail.” He laughed a bit, a slightly nervous lilt to his voice.

“Thanks,” Eren replied, as much to his sister as to Armin. He felt her gaze boring into him as she left the room. _Don’t waste this._

It had been a few weeks since he’d been alone, really alone, with Armin. Their shared study hall didn’t count. He was nervous suddenly, because now that he had the chance to say what he wanted to, the task was all the more daunting. He tapped his pencil absently against his paper. He flipped halfheartedly through his history book, staring at the pages without really seeing them. He glanced over at Armin, who had put away his notes and was now absorbed, of course, in a book.

What if the blonde started _really_ avoiding him? As much as he tried to reassure himself that they were best friends and Armin would never do that, the paranoia kept creeping back up on him. Actually, maybe that was why he’d been so scarce lately. Maybe Eren was just way more obvious than he thought and Armin had caught on already. If that was the case, maybe it was better to leave the subject alone after all. Some Armin was better than No Armin, and maybe with enough practice he’d be able to pretend that his chest didn’t ache whenever the blonde wasn’t by his side, that his heart didn’t skip several beats every time Armin smiled at him, that someday taking the other boy to see the ocean for real wasn’t his ultimate life goal. Pretend that he didn’t want to take him in his arms and pepper those soft-looking lips with kisses, that his golden bowl cut wasn’t the sunshine of Eren’s soul, that he couldn’t drown in the depths of those blue eyes as they flicked up and met his own…

…Shit. So much for pretending.

Armin looked just as mortified as Eren felt, and worked his mouth for a moment before the words finally came out. “Don’t you have a paper to be finishing?” He asked, raising an eyebrow and lifting his book a little too late to hide the pinkness that had flooded his cheeks. It was not lost to Eren. Fuck. He struggled to get his own vocal chords working.

“No. I mean yeah. I mean… what’re you reading?” _Nice save, Jaeger. Real fucking smooth._

Armin blinked at him over the pages, and Eren recognized the look of calculation he got when he was thinking hard about something, mentally flipping through thoughts and ideas at a pace Eren couldn’t begin to fathom. After a second during which who knows how many things flew threw his mind, Armin seemed to reach a conclusion, taking a deep breath and dropping his gaze to the page.

“It’s… about this guy. He’s kind of timid, and always dreaming of other places, and not really good at most things. The type who always got pushed around a lot as a kid. And he’s…” he paused to swallow, his fingers digging into the book cover, his familiar nervous habit. “He’s fallen pretty hard for his best friend. The friend is… kind of reckless and gets mad easily, but has never been anything but sweet to the guy and always stood up for him, no matter what. Ever since they met, the friend always made him see the beauty of the world in front of him, and made him feel like… like he was really worth something. And so he wants to tell his friend about his feelings, but he’s afraid of what will happen if he does. He tries to keep his distance a little more than usual, but it’s so hard to be away from… him.”

His eyes slid shyly back up to lock with Eren’s, the rest of his face still obscured by the book, looking like he was feeling a mix of terror and adrenaline. Eren blinked at him as the words clicked slowly through the machinery of his brain. It almost sounded like… and the friend was a _him_ … but no, that couldn’t be it. Could it? Was there really a book like that? His throat felt like it was full of sand but he forced himself to speak anyway.

“I… I think I’ve heard of that one.” His voice came out somewhat hoarse. “The friend wants to tell him about his feelings too, but can’t get the right moment. The main character… makes his world so much bigger just by being there, and the friend wants to be with him forever.”

All Eren could hear was the rush of blood through his head as it pounded in his ears, and his heart danced a tango in his throat. The two of them stared wide-eyed at each other for a long moment. Armin wasn’t scolding him about spoilers or anything, nor was he frowning in confusion and denying it. So did that mean…?

He willed his body into action and reached over, pushing the book down to reveal the rest of Armin’s reddened face. The other boy watched him nervously and Eren could see the rapid flutter of his pulse in his throat, the rise and fall of his shoulders as he took quick, shallow breaths. Eren’s vocal chords were useless and he didn't know what else to say anyway, so instead of trying to speak he leaned in, and Armin met him halfway, and their noses bumped clumsily but then _god I knew it his lips are so soft_ they were kissing, pressed together a little awkwardly at first but then they found the right angle and their lips settled into place against each other, and Eren thought that if the sun exploded right then and there he would die happy.

It was slow, and gentle, and chaste, but the flood of affection and elation and the feeling of Armin’s lips pulling softly against his, a feeling he’d imagined so, so many times before but was never quite sure if he’d ever get to experience it for real, threatened to push him into a sensory overload. It was much too soon when he reluctantly pulled back, just slightly enough to rest their foreheads together while he caught his breath, and he let his hand slide up the other boy’s arm to thread fingers into his soft yellow hair. Armin’s face was flushed, eyes locked onto Eren's and glinting with wonder, and suddenly his vocal chords were functioning again.

“I love you,” was what tumbled out of his mouth, and for a split second his insides froze over, because those words were heavy and though he meant them with every fiber of his being, would go to the moon and back to prove it, what if it was too much too fast? But Armin just beamed and reached up to cup his face in his hands.

“I love you, too,” he breathed, and Eren could feel the words thrumming in the small space between their lips, and he was sure his heart would never beat at a normal pace again. He pulled Armin close against him, nuzzling into the strands of golden hair and breathing him in as the other boy’s arms wound tight around his shoulders. They were both leaning awkwardly off their chairs but Eren couldn’t bring himself to let go long enough to change position. Pressed together as they were, he could feel Armin’s heart pounding just as hard as his own.

His eyes wandered over to the book, which Armin had dropped face-up on the edge of the table at some point, and he finally bothered to actually look at the cover.

“ _Frankenstein?!_ ” He blurted incredulously. Armin just buried his face in Eren’s shoulder and began to laugh.

~

“So basically, this guy is ugly because his ancestor fucked an ape?”

Armin blinked owlishly up at him over the top of his book. “It’s not worded quite so bluntly, but yes, that’s the long and the short of it.” Eren could hear the smile in his voice. They were in Armin’s room today, Eren playing on his handheld, Armin recounting a story from his current book, an anthology by some old dead author. Armin’s room was a place that had always amazed Eren – there were probably at least six bookshelves crammed into the small space, all of which were packed to overflowing. As if that wasn’t enough, stray books littered his desk, nightstand, and even the foot of his bed. Armin read anything under the sun – over the edge of his screen, Eren spotted some trashy romance novels and even a few tomes that looked suspiciously similar to some of his dad’s medical books. While once upon a time being in a room like this would’ve bored him out of his mind, now it just filled him with affection. It was just so _Armin_.

“You read some weird shit, babe,” he said, glancing up as he pressed a button to attack a big purple rock with his adorable pickaxe-wielding chibi character. Epic battle music began to filter out of the little speakers. Armin rolled his eyes, refusing to rise to the bait.

“You sure seem happy to listen to it,” he retorted, setting the book down and standing up from his desk chair. A mustachioed octopus-thing wearing a suit and monocle stared up from the cover. Weird shit, indeed.

“Anything that comes out of your mouth makes me happy,” Eren replied, feeling the bed dip as Armin slid in beside him and wrapped his arms loosely around the taller boy’s waist.

“What if I told you that _my_ ancestor fucked an ape?”

Eren snorted and nudged his elbow gently into the blonde’s ribs. “It must’ve been a really pretty ape.”

“You’re taking this news surprisingly well.”

“Technically, didn’t everyone’s ancestors fuck apes?”

“That’s not _quite_ how evolution works, honey.”

“Really? I feel lied to.” He finished taking down the rock and paused the game in the middle of the victory chime, closing the device and setting it aside. “I’m surprised to see you put that thing down. It’s practically been glued to your hands the past few days.” He draped an arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders as he spoke.

“I figure I’ve talked your ear off about it enough for now,” the blonde replied with a small grin, leaning into him now that he had his full attention. “You deserve a break.”

“I could listen to you talk all day, but what did you have in mind?” Eren pushed playfully back against his weight, and something in the pit of his stomach twisted pleasantly when he felt Armin’s fingers creep onto his thigh.

“Well, now that my hands are free…”

He needed say no more. Armin suppressed a shout of laughter as Eren captured his lips and pushed him down onto the bed.

~

If someone had told five-year-old Eren that someday he’d live in a house like a library, he would’ve thrown a Lego at them. Now, waking up to the gentle flutter of a turning page, he couldn’t be happier. He cracked his eyes open to see Armin, propped up against the pillows, reading in the soft morning light that filtered through the thin curtains, glasses perched on his nose. Eren grinned sleepily, warm and comfortable and flooded with adoration.

Their apartment was filled with books that somehow just couldn’t manage to stay in their place on the shelves in the living room. They were scattered over every surface, stacked on the dressers around their travel photos (though Eren made sure to keep their wedding photo and the one he’d taken of Armin on their first trip to the ocean visible at all times), on the dining table, on the countertops. Eren would often sit down on the couch to find a novel wedged into the cushions, like a bone hidden by a dog. On one occasion he’d even found Armin’s current read in a grocery bag along with the cereal. The blonde had defended that the grocery lines were _long_ on Wednesdays. Eren had laughed at him, then asked what was so interesting about this one, then listened for the better part of an hour as Armin talked about a woman who liked to go around sticking her arms in octopus tanks (and from the way his eyes gleamed as he spoke, Eren knew that Armin would very much like to stick his arms in an octopus tank too, and made a mental note to start looking up nearby aquariums that might be talked into letting him).

Eren loved books. He loved that gleam of excitement they put in Armin’s eyes, the enthusiasm they put into his voice when he talked about them. He loved to look over from his doodling and see the blonde totally absorbed, eyes flying across the pages, dead to the world outside the one he was seeing in the words. He loved to curl up with him and listen as Armin read out loud, the tones of his voice filling Eren up as his lips spun images before his eyes. He especially loved when Armin shyly read his own writing, and Eren could glimpse the inner workings of his head through the words he worked so well.

After all the years of practice, Eren felt like he was a little bit better at the whole literature thing, and while he still couldn’t go on nearly as long as Mikasa could, he found himself able to hold up one end of a discussion on slightly more even ground. Symbolism and syntax could still go fuck themselves, though. And he was more than happy to let Armin fill the space he couldn’t, to listen and marvel at how smart and beautiful and _everything_ his husband was, and how lucky he was that Armin saw something in him. He didn’t think he would ever stop falling in love.

Eren shifted under the sheets, stretching, and languidly reached an arm out to graze his knuckles against Armin’s jaw. The blonde started out of his Book-Induced-Coma, then smiled warmly down at him over the rim of his glasses.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Eren furrowed his brow, deliberately rolling his head back to look at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Sleepyhead? It’s eight-thirty on a Sunday. That’s hardly late.”

Armin reached down to ruffle his hair fondly. “It’s noon somewhere in the world,” he teased.

“It’s _tomorrow_ somewhere in the world, so you should be getting ready for work. That’s a shitty argument and you know it.” He pushed himself up into a sitting position, raking his hair back with his fingers, and scooched over to close the already minimal gap between them. “This a new one?” He asked, peering blearily down at the book in Armin’s hands.

“Yeah, I just got it. It’s a novel written in the form of the diary entries of a husband and wife, who both think the other is reading their diary. I’m only a chapter in, but it’s pretty amusing so far.”

Eren hmmed and leaned his weight against Armin, breathing him in and soaking up the warmth of his skin. “Sounds pretty interesting. But you know what it needs?”

“What does it need?”

“More dinosaurs.”

Armin pinched him in the ribs and leaned up to kiss him.

*~END~*

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Fact: If anyone asks Eren what his favorite book is, he tells them it's Frankenstein. Armin always facepalms when he hears this, and whoever they're talking to assumes Eren just likes the movies.
> 
> My friend made a comment to me about a story from a Lovecraft anthology we both happen to be reading, and somehow that spiraled into this fic. It really is super sappy, but sometimes you just need tooth-rotting fluff. Now is definitely one of those times.
> 
> Thanks for reading this far! I hope it made you smile.


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